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July 26, 2010

(This is an updated and expanded-- again!!-- draft of an old mahjong tips post designed for visitors to the 2012 Otakon panel.)

Hi. If you're here, you were probably directed from my and Carl's mahjong panel at Otakon this year. We hope you enjoyed yourselves, and we are happier still that you've decided to follow up on learning about Japanese mahjong! Now as I'm sure we said during the panel, we were seriously strapped for time and it was impossible to get you to walk out of that room knowing how to play from scratch. As content-stuffed as that panel was, we only ran through the barest, barest essentials of the game. This is the stuff that would answer the question "what the hell is Akagi/Saki doing?". If you want to play online, or sit down at a table with your friends and play, that's going to take a little time and some light study.

Because it was hard enough for Carl and I to learn the game, I had the idea of assembling the resources that helped us the most when we were learning in a post. I've done this before, but I think I can do better for the panel, so here we are.

In the age of the internet you have the luxury of being able to play at any damn time you want. I am a learn-by-doing kind of guy, so why not play right now? This Flash game supplies a reasonable explanation of the game, complete with yaku, right there on the page. Don't worry about being bad or not, it's the computer, who cares. It's completely okay to be lost at this point. Play around with this to get yourself vaguely familiar with the game, but try not to stay for too long after you've gotten the hang of it.

The game's also in English with Arabic numerals on the man suit, something you're not going to see on other Reach videogames or online play services. You're going to want to take this opportunity to start memorizing the numbers if you don't know them. You really must know these going forward, or you'll be missing out on playing online or even on a decent set. They're not very hard to learn (the first three are free) and it is much more trouble not to learn them than to do so.

Now you can learn the rules!

This is a friendly run-through of all the rules aimed at beginners, covering initial setup to everything about actual play. I think this is the most accessible guide online.

My personal rules and scoring bible is Japanese Mahjong Scoring. I recommend learning the yaku from here. When I was still getting a handle of the game I kept a printout of this entire document in a folder and referred to it as necessary.

Oh my god look at all the yaku:

Don't feel immediately obligated to learn all the yaku straight away: that's exactly how people get intimidated out of playing. Understand the most essential yaku that show up most often: riichi, pinfu, tanyao, yakuhai. Understanding these will help you more than anything else. Come back to the yaku charts every time you play and let the rest of them sink in, both through a conscious effort to learn them and by seeing them in play. Also, play the yaku quiz every once in a while.

By the way, I personally stick to the Japanese terminology or the super-straight translations on the Mahjong Scoring site simply because if you ask two or three different English-speaking Reach organizations or websites they'll give you four or five different English names for the same yaku. It's easier this way and my mahjong-playing friends always know what I'm talking about when I say "sanshoku". Unless it's sanshoku doukou but when do you ever see that one? Anyway!

Scoring:

At the panel, we probably said that scoring was complex enough in Reach rules as to be beyond the scope of the panel. Well, it is. The reason our example goes directly to 5 han is that when you're under that 5 han you have to count up another number (the fu) using some very particular criteria that alters the score somewhat.

1 han is not always 1000 points, depending on dealer/non-dealer and the fu. Once you get to 5 han you're at "limit" hands which have simple scores that are easy to remember, so long as you remember that the dealer gets 1.5x more.

Don't just say "I don't need to learn scoring" if you only intend to play online, that's crap. You are eventually going to be making decisions based on how many points you stand to make. Keep in mind that riichi is a game where you play for table position more than just for points, and you can take or lose first place by only a few hundred points.

(Also playing live is way more fun, try it out man)

Unfortunately, "memorize it" is the main tip I have for you with regards to learning Riichi scoring. There's a system, but it's extremely convoluted and you're actually better off memorizing a table. Here are some resources, including a chart you will need and a scoring quiz for quick and easy practice.

When you take this task on, I advise starting from the top with the big limit scores because those are the easiest ones to know. Mangan, haneman, baiman, sanbaiman (never happens anyway), yakuman. That's the easy stuff because the fu points don't affect it. Then, understand the way you count up fu scores. Then, from the scoring chart, know the lines that actually come up in a game: 20 fu, 25, 30, 40. Anything with more fu is pretty uncommon (hands with more than one triple, closed kans). Then do the rest. Keep a scoring chart on hand anyway.

Intermediate stuff:

There is not a lot of in-depth riichi mahjong strategy reading out there in English. If you read Japanese then absolutely hit up Beginner's Luck: there is a mountain of great common-sense info and theory there. It's the kind of material that I wish had an English-language equivalent. Of course there's a ton of strategy reading in Japanese, so I won't get into it.

Just Another Japanese Mahjong Blog posted translations of puyo's excellent strategy blog that cover a wide range of points about the game. Unfortunately, it looks like they're on hiatus.

Theseposts on Osamuko's blog about defense are pretty good info. Heavy terminology, be warned. If you want to win, you must play a good defense. If you read this stuff and decide "that's not my style!" then your style will be "Well, I lost again."

I like to watch pro footage on Nico to see how people who are actually good at mahjong manage their hands. I'm not telling you to directly copy their play, but try and play along and compare their decisions with your own.

Portable Mahjong:

On iOS your best option is Mahjong Tengokuhai. This one has a great interface, online play, and a lot of different things to do in single-player. No idea about Android, but there are a lot of apps.

(this part is from when I was actually using my DS)

I have Mahjong Fight Club for the DS. I have played every single other mahjong title for the console (by, uh, means) and this one is the best for more reasons than I have time to describe. It's particularly good for learning the yaku because an announcer reads out the name of every yaku a hand has. When you finish a hand in MFC, just sit and wait and listen. The sole interface issue is that it's not immediately obvious at a glance what your seat wind is, but you can figure that out. You can play online over Wi-Fi but it was a complete disaster when I tried it. I would imagine Konami doesn't care a ton about this service when they run pay services for MFC Wii and PS3, which I imagine nobody uses either...

Community:

You're going to want to play real people whenever possible: playing weak AI opponents in any game isn't really good for your play.

Aside with getting together with your own friends (who you should totally try and sell on the game), you're probably going to want competition against people who've walked the same hard road as you have. English-speaking Reach players are pretty rare anywhere, even on the Internet, so this can be tough.

Reach Mahjong is the largest Reach site online but it's also gone completely stagnant, despite a major overhaul of the site. The forums are a ghost town (I first wrote this two years ago and it is still the case), but there's a lot of good material on the site itself if you just dig deep into the site's old posts. I can't really recommend their beginner's stuff (and I don't think it's on the site anymore after their overhaul): the writing style and inconsistent terminology severely confused me when I was starting out. I have no idea about their book.

If you can make it out here to NYC once a month, I highly recommend the USPML meets. I never miss one myself. Don't feel intimidated by that name: they're very welcoming and as they say, if you can play online you'll be fine here.

If you do IRC (I do) there's #mahjong or #osamuko on Rizon. I hang out on #osamuko as TRIPLEBREAK.

Online Play:

Keep in mind that videogames, online services and so on are going to be in Japanese. Mahjong Time is in English but that is the only thing going for it. The client is horrendous. I'm not even going to link to it, it's so bad. It offends both my gaming and aesthetic sensibilities.

I'm going to keep this short: just use Tenhou. It's the fastest, simplest client and it can have you up against three strangers in ten seconds flat. Furthermore, Tenhou is extensively documented in English here. While Tenhou is completely workable without any language issues, you'll still want to read that to know exactly what you're clicking. To make that even easier: the third row, 4 players ariari red, is the standard ruleset that most Japanese players use. The first column is an East-only round, and the second is East-South.

A small community of English-speaking players uses the 7447 lobby, though keep in mind that it will take a very long time to get a match and you might find yourself having to comb /jp/, 4chan's worst board and possible soul poison, in order to get games.

(Note 7/25/12: There are more people on 7447, basically because of Saki: Achiga-hen. I suspect and fear that it will go back to the way it was when the final episodes run.)

I usually just play the in default ranked lobby with random Japanese folk instead, but 7447 can be fun too.

When you are ready for Tenhou, I recommend the beginner's guide on Osamuko's blog.

Other online play:

There are other clients, but none are as good as Tenhou is. Janryumon is a flashy, popular clone of Sega's MJ arcade games, now open outside Japan. My argument against JRM is that aside from the league mode, the game is much more about grinding (playing matches over and over again) to get superfluous items and goodies than it is about getting better at the game. Its ranking system is a grind that anybody, no matter how bad at the game, can climb to the top of if they just play enough games. On the other hand, Tenhou's entire rank system is set up to force you to play better (and to avoid last place at all costs). JRM also has a lot of beginner-friendly training-wheels help, so if you're starting out that can be really helpful.

There are a ton of Japanese mahjong games for console ranging from serious to strip (and importers don't really bother stocking them because they'll never sell a copy), but your options for online play on console outside of Japan are pretty poor. You're gonna need a PS3, and your only viable options were both nominated for 2ch's Shit Game of the Year award in '09. I'll leave it at that.

Buying a real set:

I think there's nothing like live play: the feel of the tiles, the satisfying clacking sound, the friendly banter. I can jump on Tenhou for a battle against random strangers any time, but things are different among friends. Perhaps, if you can convince them, your friends will be as fascinated as you are. It's worth a shot!

See these two posts for recommendations on what to buy. Don't buy the Dragon set.

Well, that's about all the information I can think to dump on you. I hope it serves you well. Enjoy the game!

Street Fighter EX is one of those games that was reviled by a lot of hardcore gamers back in the day for a lot of reasons it didn't deserve. At this time in game history, games were really shifting to 3D graphics, with the exception of a few extravagant 2D arcade games. A notable example was Street Fighter Alpha, drawn in sharp, anime-style 2D that astonished Young Dave many years ago. The idea of Street Fighter in 3D was outright offensive to many fans. Street Fighter EX was pretty ugly, and perhaps B-grade as a fighting game (most fighting games from this era were D-grade so this is pretty good), but I think it has its charm.

In particular, the music. In the 90s, a lot of arcade games had their original music arranged for the home version, because what else to do with all that unused space on the disc? The composers for SFEX (Shinji Hosoe, Ayako Saso, and Takayuki Aihara) were able to go the extra mile and actually re-record all this music with live players, which was actually pretty uncommon in game music back then. The PS version of EX is an okay game with a great soundtrack, and it's perhaps more remembered for that than anything.

Now I have all these songs on my computer, but I was curious what other people thought of them so I ventured out into the exciting world of Youtube comments. I noticed that for a couple of these songs, the Youtube comments actually revealed the fan demographic.

July 22, 2010

I have made mention here of the fact that Carl and I have a panel at Otakon next weekend in Baltimore. After a lot of work, the presentation is more or less in the can. We just needed to know when to walk into the place and get it done. Unfortunately for everyone, Otakon has a habit of releasing vital info (most notably "what will be at the con this year") much, much later than they rightfully should. We only found out about a month ago that we had a panel at all. The schedule only just got figured out, so now we know when we're on.

Yeah, about that. We are on Friday in Panel IV at 9:30 AM, a half hour after the convention opens. On the one hand, the place is huge. On the other, it is going to be empty. This is a death slot, no way around it. There are only a couple of ways this time slot could be worse: we
could be starting directly at 9:00 or we could be late Sunday, when
everybody is packing up and leaving. (Mike "Damn" Toole got that spot, what is going on here people that guy is really good).

At this time of day, a lot of people are still in hour-long lines to buy tickets or just to get in the damn building (I'm not even sure how I'm going to pick up my press badge in time), others are still asleep in their hotel rooms, and many aren't even in Baltimore yet. It's going to be difficult for people to show up to this panel even if they wanted to, and still more people who might have been interested will only notice the panel even existed after we've already finished running it. I've already had a couple of friends tell me there's no way they can make it.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm glad we have a panel at all given how many people got rejected and how tight the schedule is. That said, to do all the work for a panel only to find out it's been invalidated by the fact that nobody can possibly show up for it is seriously disappointing. Before we even applied, we were told there was some demand for this thing! Hopefully whatever small crowd can make it out (I am betting on under twenty people) gets something out of it. AND YOU. COME TO OUR PANEL.

We'd love to see the time change, but the schedule is already packed (I'm sure the other four panels running alongside us would like to be relocated too) and I seriously doubt anybody wants our spot. We tried to get wah, who's in a sweet spot in the schedule, to trade places with us, BUT NO. More reason to hate that guy!

July 19, 2010

I have already noted that I'm enjoying Viz's Sigikki experiment. They run comics on the site now, they sell them in sweet deluxe volumes later. Yes, this means that a deliciously ironic prestige edition of future camp classic Afterschool Charisma is on shelves right now. The books have been coming out and I'm starting to buy them as my limited resources will allow. This system is the compromise between the readers and the publishers that everybody says the publishers need to undertake to stay alive in the future, and to their credit Viz is doing it 100% right.

So you can imagine how awesome it must feel to load up the Ikki website and see this comment on the page for Q Hayashida's Dorohedoro, a smart, vicious, and very funny fantasy action manga:

"Honestly, this manga not very good. I got hooked and marathoned all
85 "Curse[s]" I could find fan-subbed and this story really goes nowhere
fast. By curse 85 the series seems to have way overshot a natural
feeling ending and still there is no real ending to the story in sight.
It feels as if the author is writing the story as she goes and doesn't
know how she wants it to end."

You can do everything right, and not only will people screw you, they'll tell you they did and say it sucked anyway. Stay classy, fandom.

(At this rate I'm probably going to end up finishing Eden scanlated, huh...)

July 15, 2010

My generation of anime fans were first indoctrinated by Japanese animation and videogames in part because we didn't have to concern ourselves with the baggage of where they came from. Everything was reversioned and localized to the point where Young Dave was never even presented with the idea of this cartoon coming from a foreign country. Much less did I think about the origins of my videogames: the market was so Japanese-dominated in those days that it was in fact European games, then American games, that felt most foreign to me.

But a lot of games and cartoons from those days gave me a weird feeling. They were a little off: the big-eyed characters in some games and the way they matched up with two or three of the more unusual cartoons I'd seen once or twice on TV. There was something alien to the aesthetic, and it wasn't until I read about it in EGM and started watching Saturday Morning Anime on the Sci-Fi channel that I started to regard the whole thing as a phenomenon. It wasn't until junior high or so that I'd get wrapped up in anime fandom proper when my best friend dragged me to the anime club.

Anyway, one of those weird-feeling things was Keith Courage in Alpha Zones. Keith Courage was a truly mediocre game that was inexplicably packed in with the Turbo-Grafx 16 console, which I had as a kid because the Genesis was sold out at the toy store. It's regarded as the worst pack-in game for a console ever, and I'd agree: the game isn't terrible but it's got no atmosphere, and the stages are poorly designed. Plodding through them, whacking away at enemies that never seem to die, is incredibly tedious. Bonk, Ninja Spirit, Final Lap Twin, those were good games. Keith
Courage I only played when I'd already beaten Pac-Land once that day.

Unusually for a game with no particular character, Keith Courage turned out to be an anime-licensed game. The basis was a Sunrise kids' joint called Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru (which I can assure the Magweasel author that no anime dorks know about, Megumi or not: anime fans only do anime starting at stuff for ten-year-olds) and the videogame, an early release in Japan as well and one of the few candidates for pack-in, was American Comic'ized for the US. Have a look at that very comic for yourself: Keith Courage is recast as a buff teen in the post-apocalypse, putting an image in kids' heads that's at sharp contrast with the colorful rainbow world of the anime. The Mountain of the Gods? That's ALPHA ZONES, silly! This was just the beginning of NEC's regrettable foray into using comics as advertising, by the way.

Wataru hasn't hasn't been brought back from the dead by a US anime company, digital distribution or fansubbing. This is understandable, as the TG16 was a failure and even those kids who owned one probably didn't fondly remember Keith Courage.

So the other day I found fansubs of Wataru. I know, right? Specifically, it is a 1998 reboot of the series called Chou (Super) Mashin Eiyuuden Wataru. The geniuses over at Sunrise give the hero amnesia and send him right back out there to do the same damn thing-- pilot a tiny robot against the legions of evil while climbing the Mountain of the Gods, I mean-- all over again. Honestly, it's a pretty boring and standard kids' robot show, but Megumi Hayashibara is in fact present as a hyperactive ninja child. As far as voices, the real star of this show is Tesshou Genda, who you may remember as the best anime narrator of the past decade, as the robot. Also, the next episode promises a "Bungee Town" in which all inhabitants are obligated to bungee jump all the time. I'm not sure how that's supposed to work, but there it is.

If you know anime genres well enough, you could probably make up the entire contents of the Wataru anime in your head and basically be right. We definitely weren't missing much, but Keith Courage in Alpha Zones-- with its stubby robot and its rainbow teleporters-- makes a lot more sense now. Also, as seems to happen on a lot of kids' shows, this is one of those fansubs where they insist on not translating certain words. Some annoying effects on the subs, one character's lines are framed with flowers, overuse of TL notes, you get the idea. TG16 kids might want to give it a look either way, so see where the threadbare basics for that videogame they hated came from.

It's a fact. A translator over at Mangagamer is a friend, and when he asked for a Colony Drop review of one of their games, I, the Good Cop of the crew, decided to step in. The game is Navel's Soul Link, a sci-fi visual novel about a band of cadets trapped in a space station under attack by terrorists. Soul Link is an eroge, as the kids say, but in this game that mostly just means that the story is interspersed with a lot of arbitrary sex scenes.

To make the experience more fun for all of us, I decided to liveblog the game as I chip away at it under the Twitter tag #davevssoullink. This is an ongoing thing and it looks like it's gonna take a while, so by all means, follow me (@sasuraiger) and be on the lookout. Posts from the first play session are unavailable right now, but I'll be saving stuff and the Twitpic archive already runs pretty deep.